The 10 Best Red Sox Games of 2013, Part Two_BINARY_1245756

BOSTON -- This time last year, we put together the six best wins of the Red Sox season. Why six? Because we couldn't get to 10.

By Tim Britton

BOSTON -- This time last year, we put together the six best wins of the Red Sox season. Why six? Because we couldn't get to 10.

None of those six would crack this top 10, a list that excludes the likes of a division-clinching regular-season win over the Blue Jays, a July walk-off over the Yankees and a pair of memorable series-clinching wins in the postseason over the Rays and Tigers.

That's how good a year it was at Fenway Park.

Be sure to check out Part One here.

5. September 3: Red Sox 2, Tigers 1

By the start of September, the Red Sox had built a comfortable 5.5-game lead over the Rays in the American League East, and a berth in the playoffs appeared -- insomuch as it could be two years after September 2011 -- pretty much assured. The question became whether Boston was a legitimate threat to win the AL pennant, and specifically whether the Red Sox had enough to get past the defending pennant-winners from Detroit.

And so the two teams' three-game set at Fenway that first week of September felt foreboding. The Tigers shut the Sox out in the first one, and they had eventual Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer going in the second game against Jon Lester. Here was Lester's chance to show he could match an ace, and Boston's chance to show it was legit.

What followed was a game that portended much of the American League Championship Series. Both pitchers looked dominant for extended stretches, and the outcome was decided by one at-bat: Will Middlebrooks' two-out, two-run single up the middle off Scherzer in the fifth.

Combine that with Boston's 20-4 thrashing of the Tigers a night later, and suddenly the Red Sox looked like a team capable of getting to the World Series.

4. ALCS Game Three: Red Sox 1, Tigers 0

And then the Red Sox and Tigers played pretty much the same game exactly six weeks later, this time with John Lackey and Justin Verlander locking horns.

It is easy in retrospect to understate the significance of the Game Three win. Yes, Boston's remarkable comeback in Game Two is the proverbial turning point of the series; from the vantage point of the future, it is the moment the Red Sox won the series and the Tigers lost it. (Historians of the 2002 Eastern Conference Finals could tell you otherwise, of course.)

But that was only the second game of the series, and Detroit returned to Comerica Park with home-field advantage for the series, Verlander on the mound and confidence its staff could continue to shut down the Red Sox offense -- as Verlander did, no-hitting them into the fifth.

Lackey was matching him zero for zero, though, including escaping a leadoff double in the fifth by striking out the very-hard-to-strike-out Omar Infante. Mike Napoli, who was 0-for-6 with six strikeouts in the series, at the time, finally connected with one in the seventh, launching a homer for the game's only run.

David Ortiz's grand slam was the biggest home run of the postseason, no doubt. But Napoli's wasn't far behind.

3. August 1: Red Sox 8, Mariners 7

There are positive and negative milestones for any team during a season. The first win, the first comeback win, the first response to a losing streak -- they're all easy to pinpoint after the fact.

August 1 against the moribund Mariners sure didn't look like it would be much of a milestone at first pitch. Even with Felix Hernandez on the mound, just what could the Red Sox prove against Seattle? Just what would we learn about them that we didn't know before?

You all remember what happened that night, though. The 7-1 deficit (it was a Henry Blanco grand slam off Ryan Dempster, by the way), the seven shutout if not quite spectacular innings from Hernandez, the six-run ninth-inning rally that Daniel Nava started and Daniel Nava finished -- complete with a botched pitching change and a strike three that wasn't against Jonny Gomes.

What was the milestone, then? August 1 was the night New England fell for these Red Sox for good. Even as the Sox spent most of the first four months of the season in first place, the back pages had focused on the breakup of the Celtics or the playoff magic of the Bruins or the off-the-field drama of the Patriots. The Red Sox were somehow under the radar.

They weren't by the morning of August 2. This was a walkoff win that trumped the previous 10, a win that made a justifiably leery fan base full-fledged believers again.

"If we keep winning games like this, we're going to go some place we want to be," Shane Victorino said. "This is definitely something you look back on and say, 'This could be special.'"